


Hidden in the Leaves

by ohayohimawari



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, PoV Hatake Sakumo, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohayohimawari/pseuds/ohayohimawari
Summary: What if Sakumo survived?This is his story, as imagined if he lived to watch his son's progress in the shinobi world. Follow along as he questions where his loyalty lies, his relationship with his son is tested, and as he unravels the mystery of what happened to his wife.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi's Mother/Hatake Sakumo
Comments: 21
Kudos: 42





	1. Tsukimi

**Author's Note:**

> I will add more content and character tags as this story grows, but the major tags that I think readers should be aware of have been listed. Any violence or dark content would not exceed what you find in canon. This is one of my writing projects for NaNo 2020. This will be an angst story, which is a departure from what I normally write but it's a story that I'd like to tell.
> 
> I appreciate the encouragement that comes from readers' comments and I welcome them on this story. I love it when readers share their journey through the story and their experience with it. Thank you.
> 
> I do not own these characters; I'm excited about the challenge of approaching canon through the eyes of Sakumo (who lives!).

“You’re not getting sleepy already, are you?”

Sakumo teased his young son, his only son, Kakashi, who sat beside him on their porch, where they could best view the moon. His small feet dangled over the side, but his legs were not yet long enough for them to touch the ground. He’d slouched in his drowsiness and started to tilt too far to one side.

“’M not,” Kakashi replied stubbornly as he righted himself.

Sakumo smirked and ruffled his son’s silver cowlicks. He set down his cup of sake, reached for the nearby bowl of edamame, plucked one out, and then handed it to his son.

“You had a big day with the pack,” Sakumo retrieved his sake cup and sipped it sparingly as his son munched on his snack, “every time I looked out at the paddies, you were running through them. Did you wash all the mud off of the ninken?”

“Yes,” Kakashi drawled, exasperated.

“Did you wash all the mud off of _you_?” Sakumo teased him again, gently bumping his shoulder into his son’s.

“Yes,” Kakashi giggled his reply this time.

“I can’t imagine what your mother would’ve said if she saw that you had mud _inside_ of your ears,” Sakumo chuckled.

Kakashi’s giggles rang out again in his boyish, high-pitched tone like playful chimes in the wind. Sakumo smiled at the precious sound, noting a husky twinge to it brought on by a day of hard playing and briefly wondered how deep Kakashi’s voice would become as he grew older.

Sakumo blinked the unknown future from his eyes as the small child that his son currently was, began to give in to his drowsiness. Kakashi shifted his position to recline on his side next to Sakumo and rested his head on his father’s leg.

“When is she coming home?” He asked through a yawn.

“Soon,” Sakumo’s vague reply came instantly because it was the truth with which she’d left him.

“Why do we watch the moon?” Kakashi moved on to his next question, but the fact that there were only two thus far and that he asked them separately betrayed his sleepiness.

Sakumo smiled down at his inquisitive, bright son, literally the latter at this moment with moonlight illuminating his thick silver strands of hair. “I’m going to get you a special notebook to write all of your questions in,” he spoke his thoughts aloud softly.

Kakashi’s weak, incoherent protest was made further ineffective when mumbled into Sakumo’s leg.

Sakumo decided it would be best to address his son’s question directly, instead of assigning more homework than he already had to him. “Don’t you remember from last year?”

He felt Kakashi’s head slowly shake his negative response. “Ah, well, perhaps you were still too young, and this year you may be too sleepy to remember,” he ran his hand over his son’s bushy hair, so like his own, smoothing cowlicks that popped back up as soon as they were released from the pressure.

“This patch of land belonged to the Hatake clan before Konoha was the name that was given to it.” Sakumo began reciting the tale his father told in the same manner that it must have been handed down to him. “For as long as anyone can remember, the Hatake have been tied to this land, even as others fought over it.”

He wet his lips and tongue with his sake. “Before the founding of the Hidden Leaf Village, it was our clan that grew the rice that fed most others, and as such, both the Uchiha and the Senju clans sought out an alliance with the Hatake.”

He ran his fingers over the side of his son’s face and felt Kakashi’s eyelashes flutter against them as he blinked. With the confirmation that he was still awake and listening, Sakumo continued.

“Our clan hesitated to align ourselves with either, knowing that such an agreement meant that our rice would be withheld from some who relied on it. There is no greater threat than people who think they will starve, and that fear of potential attacks on our crops and this land kept the Hatake from joining in the feuds. However,” Sakumo rubbed his hand along Kakashi’s arm when he saw gooseflesh rise from it in the cooling night air, “they could only hold out for so long.”

“Is that when we became ninjas?” Kakashi snuggled in closer to his father’s warmth.

“I’m not sure about ninjas, but that was when they became fighters.” Sakumo removed his vest and draped it over his son’s body like a blanket. “Some of them, anyway,” he rested his hand on Kakashi’s shoulder, considering how much detail he should go into of the history of the Hatake clan’s dwindling numbers from the moment they were driven to protect their land by force instead of farming it.

Sakumo sighed and picked the story up further from where he’d left it. “Eventually, our clan didn’t have to decide on an alliance with either of the Uchiha or the Senju clans because they formed an alliance between themselves. So, the feuding ended, Konoha began, and the Hatake remained here as they ever were.”

He pulled another quick sip from his sake cup. “Moon viewing, especially after the harvest, is our clan’s tradition, Kakashi. I used to sit where you are now with my father, and he with his as others did, all the way back to before any of us could remember. Someday, you’ll be old enough to drink sake with me,” Sakumo chuckled but was met with only the sound of his son’s even breathing, proof that he’d fallen asleep. “And another someday after that, you’ll sit here with your son or daughter, I hope,” his prayer uttered just above a whisper.

Sakumo lifted his gaze to the moon and silently considered the history and future of his clan. Whether their loyalty was attached to the land or to the leader of it had always been ambiguous.

However, the one thing that _was_ clear, even to the point of manifesting in the jutsus of his generation, was that the Hatake derived their strength from the ground beneath them. Sakumo understood that this land was worth living for, worth fighting for, and even worth dying for, as innumerable Hatakes before him proved.

He lowered his gaze to the paddies below the moon. Now, they were nothing more than muddy fields since the harvest pulled the rice from them. He smiled around another sip of sake at the memory of his son charging through them earlier that day with eight barking ninken in his wake. Being a father made it easy for Sakumo to imagine countless children over countless generations doing the same. He decided that it must be as much of a Hatake tradition as tsukimi.

What was more difficult for him to imagine was a time when the field before him was crowded with Hatakes watching the moon together. Sakumo scanned the horizon, wondering where smaller groups might’ve gathered under the night sky and shared their edamame, taro, and chestnuts, where sake was drunk and offered as a sacrifice. Where songs had surely been sung and where they wrote the poems that outlived them.

In his lifetime, Sakumo knew only a handful of Hatakes. Now, he was left with the only other two that he’d contributed to the clan. Tonight, there was only one other to watch the moon with him, and that one other had already fallen asleep.

Sakumo lifted his gaze and his sake cup to the moon, half in a toast and half in an apology to it. Then he drained it, silently thanking the moon for still shining so brightly down upon them. He gathered Kakashi gently in his arms and stood up, taking as much care to not jostle the boy as possible.

As he carried him inside, there was no way that Sakumo could guess that in a few short years, he’d be fighting in a war to defend the Hatake land and Konoha around it. When he tucked Kakashi in bed, he had no reason to think that his son would be fighting in yet another war only a few years after _that_ and that it would leave him to view the moon with his father through an eye that wasn’t his.

And as Sakumo collected their meager and mostly untouched traditional feast from the porch, he could never have known that though his wife promised to return soon, she never would.


	2. It Won't Come Off

“It won’t come off,” Kakashi whimpered above the sound of the water running from the kitchen faucet.

Sakumo stood behind him, gripping a towel so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. He pried one hand from it to place it on his son’s shoulder, who still stood at least a head shorter than him—a boy promoted too early to sustain a man’s trauma.

Sakumo squeezed Kakashi’s shoulder, willing that his son felt reassured by it. There wasn’t much else that Sakumo thought he could do for him other than offer his presence so that his son didn’t suffer alone.

Kakashi reached for the soap, again.

“I’ll make us some tea,” Sakumo offered out of a need to do anything as he set the towel down on the counter near the sink, and Kakashi acknowledged it with a nervous, curt nod.

Sleep was scarce in the Hatake house since before the two wars that haunted the two inhabitants of it, and they wouldn’t manage to steal any more of it tonight.

Sakumo carried the tea kettle to the bathroom sink to fill it, so he didn’t interrupt Kakashi’s ritual. He wondered for the umpteenth time if he was helping or hurting his son by indulging him, and for the umpteenth time, chastised himself for thinking of it as an indulgence.

The Third Shinobi War left his son scarred inside and out. Before Kakashi could recover from the shock of losing one teammate, he lost the other. The first sacrificed himself for his son’s sake, and the other sacrificed herself upon him. The weight of being unable to prevent either or both tragedies weighed so heavily on Sakumo that it made it difficult for him to breathe sometimes. The first time he rushed to the hospital, he found a crack in his son, literally bisecting one eye. The second time, Kakashi’s eyes - both owned and borrowed - showed that he’d shattered.

Sakumo felt forever indebted to Obito Uchiha for saving Kakashi, but half-wished that he’d withheld his gift.

The Sharingan was a double-edged sword. It meant that Kakashi had two eyes, true, though he could only use one most of the time. But he could and did rely on it when he needed it most, which was too often for Sakumo’s liking. His son inherited his mother’s ability to wield genjutsu, and the Sharingan enhanced it. However, Kakashi preferred to employ it for a jutsu of his making. Sakumo knew that he’d never master that eye because Hatakes weren’t intended for one. Its ability to memorize moments and etch them permanently in its host’s brain was too overwhelming, as Kakashi proved with every nightmare.

And nightmares visited them too often and lingered too long.

Kakashi was plagued with them now, and every time, they woke Sakumo first. A hallway separated their bedrooms, but he clearly heard his son’s moans and outcries whenever he relived the worst in his slumber. He learned the hard way that it was easier on them both if he waited for the terrors to rouse his son instead of him. And when they did, Sakumo made sure to be in Kakashi’s line of sight, grounding him in the safety and surroundings of their home. The moments that immediately followed Kakashi’s waking were the worst. Sakumo did his best to keep the pain out of his face as his son stared at him, sweating and shaking, through the red and spinning remnant of one teammate’s death, until the remnants of the nightmare of the other’s receded.

While he waited for Kakashi to recover from his nightmares, Sakumo worried that he’d woken his son much in the same way when he had his.

The Second Shinobi War left Sakumo scarred in ways that weren’t as visible. He was a man when duty called him, and as prepared as a man could be when he answered it. However, he only fulfilled it in order to return to that for which he fought. Unlike Kakashi, he’d had time to grow into his conscience and had the strength to act on it, even if it risked dishonor, although he was thankful it hadn’t come to that. The only thing he wasn’t willing to risk was his ability to return to his son, even if that meant cutting down the sons of other fathers. It didn’t mean that he was immune to guilt, however, or that he didn’t bear his own horrors that couldn’t be washed away.

Sakumo’s nightmares didn’t wait for his experience with war to inspire them, however.

By definition, ‘soon’ refers to a short amount of time, and no one, not even Sakumo, could blame him for believing his wife would return before long. But as time passed, he learned what a frustratingly vague term it was, without anything to measure it accurately. And when time continued to pass, beyond what even _he_ could still qualify as ‘soon,’ he and Kakashi began to hope for her return, rather than expect it even though hope is a dangerous thing in the shinobi world.

Before nightmares sent him chasing through enemy territories, they sent Sakumo chasing after his wife.

He revisited their last parting frequently in his slumber. She stood in the open doorway of their home, her lips moved, forming unheard words. Then, she issued a soft smile that didn’t reach her melancholic eyes, and with that, she’d turn, offering him the last glimpse of her face before her long hair obscured it, and walked away from him.

In his dreams, Sakumo ran so hard that he’d wake with a burning chest. But no matter how fast or for how long he ran through the nightmare, she remained out of his reach.

“Raiu.”

The sound of her name startled him before Sakumo realized that he was the one that uttered it. He blinked his eyes clear of the past in time to see water spilling over the top of the full tea kettle.

He twisted the knob that turned the faucet off with more force than was necessary. Sakumo took a deep breath and looked up at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked as tired as he felt.

He raised his chin and turned his head to one side, inspecting the status of the creases that formed on his face. “At least, I don’t have to worry about grey hair,” he muttered, as a private, breathy chuckle escaped him.

He noticed that the action deepened the lines around the corners of his mouth and eyes. The alignment heartened him; it was proof that while the Hatakes had their troubles, their lives weren’t devoid of laughter. There was enough laughter to mark his face with it, anyway, and that fact brightened his demeanor.

Kakashi wasn’t in the kitchen when Sakumo returned to it, and he took it as another good sign that nerves were settling and that sleep might be possible again that night after all. He set the kettle to boil and pulled two cups from a cupboard. He knew where he could find his son when their tea was ready, and in a matter of minutes, he carried two steaming cups to the front porch outside of their house.

“Here,” he handed a cup of tea to Kakashi, who accepted it silently.

His son felt embarrassed by his nightmares, and after every one, Sakumo tried to reassure him that there was no need to be. He rubbed the back of Kakashi’s neck, one of the few affectionate gestures he was still allowed, and struck up a conversation about anything other than why they were having tea on their porch in the middle of the night.

Fortunately for them both, they had something to look forward to in the coming hours. “It’s going to be an exciting day,” Sakumo said before he sipped his tea.

“Yeah,” Kakashi replied after sipping his. He already sounded sleepy again, to Sakumo’s relief.

“Not everyone gets to watch their sensei become the next Hokage,” he continued.

“Yeah,” Kakashi repeated, but with a proud smirk this time and Sakumo smiled when he saw it.

The pair drank their tea in silence after that, bathed in the moonlight on their porch. Perhaps it was because neither father nor son could express the hope that swelled in their hearts, or because they were afraid to. But that didn’t mean they didn’t feel it.

Hope hung in the air and clung to their skin because Minato Namikaze was the embodiment of it.


	3. Keeping Watch

“Rehabilitation, fourth floor, follow the brown stripe.”

Sakumo nodded that he understood the unusual greeting from the hospital help desk employee and nearly ran for the elevators. It was the third time that he arrived at the hospital in a panic over his son, which was enough to be recognized on sight.

He was about to take the stairs when the elevator opened to him, and he pressed the fourth-floor button repeatedly until the doors closed. Sakumo shut his eyes and prayed that this time would be the last time he came here for this reason, even though it was the third time he prayed for it.

The word ‘rehabilitation’ sank into his consciousness and all that it implied. That was an easier word to digest than ‘intensive’ or ‘critical.’ Sakumo ran his fingers through his hair in an effort to calm himself, though his heart continued to pound.

There was nothing that mattered more to him than Kakashi.

The elevator doors opened, and Sakumo burst through them. His breath and pulse filled his ears; his anxiousness rendered the White Fang blind to everything except a brown stripe on the floor which he trusted to lead him to his son.

The stripe ended in front of a nurse’s station. “Hatake,” he said without looking up to the attendant.

“He’s over here, Sir.”

Sakumo looked over his shoulder when he recognized the voice of Kakashi’s childhood friend, Gai, who stood in the hallway, and he rushed over to him.

“How bad—”

“He’s resting now; he wasn’t hurt,” Gai assured him before Sakumo finished his question.

“What happened?”

“Kakashi…Well, Sir, he tried to use the chidori, but then…it’s like he froze up,” Gai’s eyes darted to the side, “and then he fainted,” he mumbled.

Sakumo felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He didn’t think that Kakashi was ready to go on missions again, even if he was cleared for them, but when he tried to argue the decision, he was dismissed by the evaluating medic-nin as a worrywart.

Next time, he would fight harder.

“Is Kakashi going to be okay?”

Sakumo studied Gai’s worried face and saw the child in him instead of the ninja that saved his son. “I’m sure that he will,” he assured the boy, “in time,” he added to guarantee that his words weren’t a lie.

Then, he tactfully lifted the mood. “He’s lucky you were there.”

“You’re darn right he is,” Gai issued a broad smile and a thumbs-up. “Lord Fourth assigned me to follow him as his backup.”

Sakumo laughed his admiration of the boy’s confidence and lowered himself on one knee to come eye-to-eye with Gai. “Thank you for being such a good friend to Kakashi,” he clapped a hand on his shoulder.

Sakumo was equally relieved to know that the Fourth Hokage at least recognized that Kakashi was struggling and wasn’t sending him out on missions without extra precautions.

A nurse approached them carrying a clipboard, and Sakumo stood up to receive the medical report on Kakashi. “I saw the others at the dango shop; you should run along and join them,” he addressed Gai. “Thank you for keeping watch until I got here.”

The nurse smiled at Gai’s retreating form, then turned her attention to Sakumo, and her smile warmed, much to his relief. “Your son didn’t sustain any new injuries in the incident, but he’ll spend the night for observation as is our standard procedure.”

“Okay, thank you. I’ll run home to get a few things to spend the night, and then I’ll be back,” Sakumo ran one hand through his hair as he considered what items he and Kakashi would need.

The nurse’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she looked like she meant it. “Non-emergency patients ranked chūnin and higher are not allowed to have overnight guests.”

Sakumo’s hand fell limp at his side.

“It’s hospital regulation,” she elaborated weakly, obviously understanding the strange situation that Kakashi’s age and rank presented.

Sakumo bit back his sharp retort. The nurse didn’t make the policies that she was expected to enforce, and as such, wasn’t the person to criticize. He nodded that he understood, and after a sympathetic smile, the nurse walked away.

Sakumo peered through the narrow window of Kakashi’s hospital room door and found his son sitting up, reading a book. Happy to see that he was already awake, Sakumo opened the door and walked in.

Kakashi started at the sight of his father, and hastily shut his book and shoved it beneath the covers on his side opposite of Sakumo.

It didn’t go unnoticed, and the action made Sakumo suspicious, but there were other things to address first. “How are you feeling?” He eased himself down to sit gingerly on Kakashi’s bed.

“Better,” his son replied.

Kakashi wore the mask that covered most of his face, and it annoyed Sakumo at such a time, but he understood that his son felt more comfortable this way in public places, and it, like the book, were battles that he felt weren’t as important as others.

“Maybe you shouldn’t use the chidori right now, Kakashi,” Sakumo charged right into one of those more important battles with as gentle a voice as he could manage.

“Dad—” Kakashi replied sharply, exasperated, but Sakumo cut him off.

“Just, hear me out, would you?” He raised a hand in a placating gesture. “There are innumerable genjutsus that you haven’t even considered. We could approach the Uchiha to see if one of them would be willing to teach you, or even your mother’s—the Kurama clan,” he hesitated even as he offered it because they weren’t on the best terms.

Silence fell between them as it always did when the missing member of their family was mentioned, and it stretched while each mentally cycled through the flood of old worries over what had happened to her.

“The chidori is _my_ jutsu,” Kakashi said.

It wasn’t the words themselves that affected Sakumo as much as the way they were spoken. It wasn’t an argument; it was a fact and the proudest accomplishment of a prodigy. He didn’t have the heart to take it away from Kakashi.

Sakumo lowered his gaze to the blanket spread across the hospital bed and searched for a compromise. It didn’t take him long to find it.

“Perhaps it’s still an imperfect jutsu,” he mused aloud, and when he looked up, he found that he had Kakashi’s full attention.

“Have you ever heard of the fabled sword of the Sengoku period, Raikiri?” Sakumo asked.

“No,” Kakashi shook his head but maintained eye contact.

“Its name means ‘lightning cutter,’” Sakumo said with a pointed look at his son.

Kakashi’s eye widened, and his father could easily imagine the excited smile hidden beneath his mask.

“We’ll talk more about it when you come home tomorrow,” Sakumo winked.

“I have to stay overnight?” Kakashi whined.

“Cheer up,” Sakumo said as he stood. “Maybe they’ll bring you lemon gelatin; ooh! Or pudding,” he teased.

Kakashi snickered but it was cut short when another visitor suddenly arrived. “Minato-sensei—I, I mean, Lord Fourth!”

“You may address me as you always have, Kakashi.”

Sakumo turned around in time to see the current Hokage’s serene smile and smiled at him in return. To see that Namikaze prioritized a visit to Kakashi over his duties as Konoha’s leader, in addition to the fact that he’d sent others to ensure his son’s safety on his recent mission, proved that he cared about Kakashi and had his best interests in mind. It left Sakumo more thankful than he could tell him, and he hoped that his smile conveyed as much.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he ruffled Kakashi’s silver cowlicks and left so Minato could have his chance to visit.

He took the long way back to his home and checked in with several of his tenants on the Hatake estate along his path. His father began to parcel the land during his lifetime, and as the need for the dwindling number of Hatakes to fill the shinobi ranks during wartime was greater than the need to farm their land, Sakumo divided it even more during his.

The nights spent alone in his home were restless ones, and he wasn’t in a hurry to reach his destination. But eventually, hunger won out, and Sakumo rounded the final turn to his house, wondering what he might throw together for his dinner or if there was an invitation from the Nara clan to join them at theirs. When he arrived at home, he found something much better waiting for him there.

“Long time, no see!”

“Jiraiya,” Sakumo greeted his friend, relieved and wholeheartedly glad to see him.


	4. The Unthinkable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very, very much to [Birkastan2018](https://birkastan2018.tumblr.com/) and [mallml](https://mallml.tumblr.com/) for the illustration of Raiu Kurama (my OC-Kakashi's Mum) included at the end of this chapter. It's beautiful, and I'm so touched that you two conspired to bring her to life. Art is shared with permission; do not repost.

Having an unexpected visitor provided the perfect excuse to venture out for dinner. The fact that his unexpected visitor was a good friend provided an equally perfect excuse for Sakumo to break out his finest sake after they returned to his house.

The fact that his good friend paid for dinner meant that he had no news for Sakumo about his missing wife.

He knew this, but the question remained on his tongue all throughout the evening. Too many cups of sake finally pushed it out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, Sakumo,” Jiraiya sighed, “I haven’t seen or heard anything about Raiu.”

Sakumo nodded and drained his cup in one gulp to burn the disappointment out of his throat. He felt Jiraiya’s eyes on him as he lifted the sake bottle to refill both of their cups.

“I haven’t asked you for details about her departure because I thought it would be cruel to make you relive it, but,” Jiraiya continued, cautiously, “perhaps a little more information would be helpful, and enough time has passed for you to give it?”

Sakumo exhaled sharply through his nose, and he closed his eyes to search his memories. He then lifted his gaze and one of his hands to point at the fence that stood between the Hatake home and the rice paddies in front of it.

“The last time that I saw Raiu, she was standing there,” he forced himself to recall every detail of a moment that he didn’t expect to be so significant at the time. “Her hair whipped around in the wind like a ribbon. I waved goodbye to her, and she smiled, saying she’d return soon. I turned around and went back into the house; if I’d known—” Sakumo shut his mouth and his eyes tightly and shook his head. “I had no reason to think it would be the last time.”

“Of course not,” Sakumo felt his shoulder gripped and shaken gently in time with Jiraiya’s reassuring words. “Have any of the Kurama come to you with any information?”

Sakumo was thankful for the change in subject, even if the new topic was almost as painful. "No. Unkai has assumed the position of the clan’s head, though they could hardly be called a clan anymore. He hasn’t forgiven me for refusing to hand Kakashi over to them after his mother didn’t return.”

“Has Kakashi shown any sign of inheriting their kekkei genkai?” Jiraiya continued to approach sensitive subjects tentatively.

“No,” Sakumo said emphatically. “He has yet to learn how to enhance genjutsu with the Sharingan, but every time he casts one, he remains in control. They’ll have to wait until the next generation or the one after to see if it manifests again.”

“At least you don’t have that worry,” Jiraiya sipped from his cup, his eyes still on Sakumo.

“Raiu would be relieved about that if she were here,” the corner of Sakumo’s mouth lifted in a slight smile. “It was easier after he was born, but that fear never left her. Anyway,” he returned to the original question about the Kurama clan, “they hadn’t learned anything about her whereabouts before the second war, and I doubt that they continued searching for her after the third.”

A succinct hum escaped Jiraiya as he solemnly nodded his head. “Did she share any details about the mission?”

“She said it was sealed, and I didn’t press her,” Sakumo looked down at his cup. “I knew it had to be something important for them to assign it to her after she’d been removed from active duty.” He swallowed another sip of sake while he shared the thoughts that had run laps through his mind for years. “Looking back, we were on the verge of the Second Shinobi War, so I’ve assumed it had to do with infiltration.”

“The Hidden Cloud shinobi were everywhere at the time,” Jiraiya recalled.

“Yeah,” Sakumo replied, tamping down one of his greatest fears of what happened to his wife.

“Raiu was accomplished in the genjutsu arts, though.”

“Yes,” Sakumo quickly agreed.

“She could trap anyone without the slightest hint that she’d cast it,” Jiraiya added softly.

This stopped Sakumo short, and he realized in his drunken haze that Jiraiya was leading him through deliberate, probing questions. He swallowed the last of the sake in his cup and all of his budding temper before it could get away from him and sighed as he considered his friend’s implication.

In his darker moments, Sakumo mulled over the idea that there hadn’t been any mission and that his wife’s melancholy overpowered her, so he couldn’t blame Jiraiya for thinking the same possibility. “I know that it was difficult for Raiu to step down as an active shinobi, but that was a choice that _she_ made herself,” he began to explain. “Yes, she felt guilty about the hole it left in her team, but when she thought she might lose the baby, she decided what was more important to her.”

Sakumo, long past caring that he was drinking too much in one night, poured another cup for himself and topped off Jiraiya’s. “It’s true that she never completely recovered after Horoki and Minoko were killed, but it was a loss that she lived through, and she always meant to return to the ranks when Kakashi was old enough,” he set the bottle down again. “While it was unexpected that she was tapped for a mission, it wasn’t impossible, and when you consider the international tensions of the time as well as her skill, it’s reasonable to believe.”

Jiraiya replied with silence, and when it lingered too long, Sakumo broke it with an admission of past doubt. “Raiu was dressed and armed for a mission when she left, and after she didn’t return and I second-guessed her, I checked her wardrobe and weapons. Those items were missing, and that’s enough proof for me to trust that she left on a mission just like she said.”

“Okay, okay,” Jiraiya nodded, “I’m sorry I pushed the idea.”

“It’s not anything I haven’t thought of myself, so I can’t fault you,” Sakumo drained the contents of his cup and reached for the bottle again. However, when he tipped it over, only a trickle of sake was left.

“Oops,” he chuckled, “I guess we’ve had too much.” He set the bottle and his cup aside and looked out at the horizon, and whistled through his teeth when he saw the sky was lighter instead of darker. “Damn, is that the sun already?”

“Yep,” Jiraiya laughed beside him.

“My son is in the hospital, my wife has been missing for years, and I drank until dawn.” Sakumo attempted to scramble up to his feet, “I’m going to hell for this.”

“Happy to help,” Jiraiya raised his cup in a toast.

Sakumo stumbled over his own feet, “I think I will need your help.”

No sooner had he said it than Sakumo felt his arm tugged across Jiraiya’s shoulders, and he was led to his bed. “You’re welcome to the couch,” he mumbled after his face landed on his pillow, and he dropped into a drunken, dreamless sleep.

It seemed he’d just closed his eyes when Sakumo was shaken awake again. He groaned at the brightness of the room, and his head spun.

“Sakumo, get up. Kakashi’s home and,” Jiraiya’s voice came hushed and frantic, “you’d better come out and talk to him.”

Alarmed, Sakumo shot up from his bed and clambered through his bedroom door and into the hallway beyond. Kakashi stood at the other end, cradling a set of new uniforms and a ceramic mask in his arms. The sight of it stopped Sakumo dead in his tracks, and he felt all the air in his lungs rush out.

“I’ve been assigned to ANBU.”

Sakumo gaped at Kakashi, and it prompted his son to elaborate, “Mina— I mean Lord Fourth wants me to be his right-hand man,” he stated proudly.

“ _Man_?” Sakumo exclaimed.

He felt Jiraiya’s hand on his arm. “Sakumo, calm down.”

“No!” Sakumo shook himself free as he shouted. He’d had enough, had been pushed too far. Jiraiya and Kakashi took a step back from him as his temper exploded.

“I _forbid_ it!” His declaration bounced off the walls, rang in his ears, and hung in the air where it dissipated into nothing because everyone-including him-knew that he lacked the authority to undo it.


End file.
